Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

Social change is born of awareness, coupled with compassion. In this passage from Les Misérables, Hugo describes the plight of Parisian children in the 1830s:

Eight or nine years after the events narrated in the second part of this story, people noticed on the Boulevard du Temple, and in the regions of the Château-d'Eau, a little boy eleven or twelve years of age, who would have realized with tolerable accuracy that ideal of the gamin sketched out above, if, with the laugh of his age on his lips, he had not had a heart absolutely sombre and empty. This child was well muffled up in a pair of man's trousers, but he did not get them from his father, and a woman's chemise, but he did not get it from his mother. Some people or other had clothed him in rags out of charity. Still, he had a father and a mother. But his father did not think of him, and his mother did not love him.  He was one of those children most deserving of pity, among all, one of those who have father and mother, and who are orphans nevertheless.  This child never felt so well as when he was in the street. The pavements were less hard to him than his mother's heart. [Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), Volume III – Marius; Book First – Paris Studied In Its Atom, Chapter XIII, Little Gavroche.]

Novels and stories:

• Mohsin Hamid, Exit West: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2017): “Your town or city or countryside is in ruins. You try to make it to the border. Only then, hoping to leave, or making it across the border, do you understand that those who live on the other side do not see you as human at all.”
• Loic Dauvillier, The Attack: A Graphic Novel (Firefly Books, 2016): “ . . . a story of lost innocence. On one of his endless wanderings, this time through an olive grove near Bethlehem, Amin meets an old Jewish man, a friend of his father’s. ‘All Palestinian Jews are a bit Arab and Israeli Arabs cannot deny being a little bit Jewish,’ he muses. The old man agrees with him, but asks: ‘So why is there so much hate in the same lineage?’”
• Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Likes (Farrar, Straaus & Giroux, 2020): “Dreams and Waking Life Blur in a New Story Collection.”
• Anna Keesey, Little Century: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012): a novel about a nascent frontier town “in the high desert of eastern Oregon” that does not paint an idyllic picture or “deliver her heroes and villains far from where they started – that is, in the middle of nowhere.”
• Ge Fei, Peach Blossom Paradise (New York Review Books, 2021): showcasing a “. . . deft mix of history, myth and invention, depicting a young woman’s emergence from her sheltered childhood to confront the realities of a land on the brink of violent change.”
• Benjamín Labatut, When We Cease To Understand the World (New York Review Books, 2021): “. . . grapples with science’s moral quandaries, but what is real and what is imagined?”
• K-Ming Chang, Bestiary: A Novel (One World, 2020) “offers up a different kind of narrative, full of magic realism that reaches down your throat, grabs hold of your guts and forces a slow reckoning with what it means to be a foreigner, a native, a mother, a daughter — and all the things in between.”
• Hari Kunzru, Red Pill: A Novel (Knopf, 2020): “Take the blue pill and continue his happy illusory life, or the red one and see the world as it actually is, in all its dizzying, violent, chaotic glory.”
• Angeline Boulley, Firekeeper’s Daughter (Holt Books for Young Readers, 2021): “'I’m writing about trauma, but I’m not writing a tragedy. I didn’t want to lose sight of the funny and loving and wonderful things about my community even though I was talking about meth and other unpleasant truths.'”
• Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House: A Novel (Little, Brown and Company, 2021): “The trouble in Paradise seems to be that men can’t control themselves, infidelity is a given, sex is currency and domestic abuse is in full bloom like lush tropical foliage.”
• Joseph Roth, Rebellion: A Novel (1924): “Government is similar, in Andreas’s mind, to God; it ‘overlies man like the sky overlies the earth.’ It might be benevolent or punishing, but its ways are not ours to question. . . . So the words ‘rude awakening’ fairly blink in neon letters on the horizon from the opening of this book.”

From the dark side:

• Richard Russo, Empire Falls: A Novel (Knopf, 2001): “So can all of C. B.'s wealth persuade the river to flow away from his land? He thinks so, and tries to do it. But ‘Empire Falls,’' for C. B. and the many other characters who populate the book after his suicidal misadventure with a handgun, is about the long-term spiritual consequences of such folly. It's about the price of reconciling dreams with disappointment, and the many unexpected ways of finding salvation.”
• György Dragomán, The Bone Fire: A Novel (Mariner, paper, 2021): “For the book’s English translation, our word ‘bonfire’ has been broken back down to its etymological roots: the literal fires of bones (and heretics and sinful objects), familiar to speakers of Middle English. That a word we now perceive as benign would have such macabre origins is a reminder that we don’t live terribly far removed from superstition and atavism, either historically or psychologically.”
• John Lanchester, Reality and Other Stories (Norton, 2021): “This intriguing debut collection grapples with technology and its illusion of convenience, choice and escape.”
• Wole Soyinka, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth (Pantheon, 2021): “a caustic political satire, a murder mystery, a conspiracy story and a deeply felt lament for the spirit of a nation.”
• Mario Vargas Llosa, Harsh Times: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021), “examines power and conspiracy at a crucial point in Latin American history.”
• Alice Zeniter, The Art of Losing: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021): “Deftly mixing research and reimagining, Naima’s narrative probes the conflicts and contradictions of the country Hamid left as a child, then documents his coming-of-age in the labor camps and teeming apartment blocks of a new country that’s anything but welcoming.”
• Neil Stephenson, Termination Shock: A Novel (William Morrow, 2021): “. . . this novel is both a response to a deeply broken reality, and an attempt to alter it.”

Poetry

"Faith" is a fine inventionWhen Gentlemen can see -But Microscopes are prudentIn an Emergency.

[Emily Dickinson, “’Faith’ is a fine invention”]

I winged my bird, / Though he flew toward the setting sun; / But just as the shot rang out, he soared / Up and up through the splinters of golden light, / Till he turned right over, feathers ruffled, / With some of the down of him floating near, / And fell like a plummet into the grass. / I tramped about, parting the tangles, / Till I saw a splash of blood on a stump, / And the quail lying close to the rotten roots. / I reached my hand, but saw no brier, / But something pricked and stung and numbed it. / And then, in a second, I spied the rattler-- / The shutters wide in his yellow eyes, / The head of him arched, sunk back in the rings of him, / A circle of filth, the color of ashes, / Or oak leaves bleached under layers of leaves. / I stood like a stone as he shrank and uncoiled / And started to crawl beneath the stump, / When I fell limp in the grass.

[Edgar Lee Masters, “Bert Kessler”]

After I had attended lectures
At our Chautauqua, and studied French
For twenty years, committing the grammar
Almost by heart,
I thought I’d take a trip to Paris
To give my culture a final polish.
So I went to Peoria for a passport—
(Thomas Rhodes was on the train that morning.)
And there the clerk of the district Court
Made me swear to support and defend
The constitution—yes, even me—
Who couldn’t defend or support it at all!
And what do you think? That very morning
The Federal Judge, in the very next room
To the room where I took the oath,
Decided the constitution
Exempted Rhodes from paying taxes
For the water works of Spoon River!

[Edgar Lee Masters, “Ida Chicken”]

Books of poems:

• Ange Mlinko, Venice: Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2022): “A Poet Who Looks at the Stuff of Daily Life and Sees Looming Apocalypse”.

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Dmitri Shostakovich, String Quartet No. 5 in B-flat Major, Op. 92 (1952) (approx. 30-32’): “This work had its inspiration in the 1950 celebrations in Leipzig marking the bi-centenary of Bach's death. . . . like the Third and Fourth Quartets, the Fifth had to wait until Stalin died before it could be performed.” “Accused of writing music that ‘dwells too much on the dark and fearful aspects of reality,’ Shostakovich had been forced to read a humiliating apology and to promise to amend his ways. On the surface, he seemed to do that, composing a series of patriotic cantatas and film scores crafted specifically to please Soviet officialdom. The ‘real’ Shostakovich went underground: over the next few years he continued to write the music he wanted to, but he kept it in his desk, waiting for more favorable times.” Top recorded performances are by Beethoven Quartet in 1953, Borodin String Quartet in 1983, Emerson String Quartet in 1999, and Pacifica Quartet in 2011.

Paul Hindemith composed eight pieces, which he denoted as being for chamber ensembles (Kammermusik) (approx. 123’) but they are better characterized pieces for small orchestra. “The orientation of art towards an objective and linear representation of reality was reflected, in the musical field, in an overcoming of romantic aesthetics, in the return to an artisanal concept of composing, in the idea of ‘use music’ ( Gebrauchsmusik ), in the recovery of a contrapuntal writing based on elementary melodic figurations and on a motoric and repetitive rhythm. Exemplary of this new language were the Kammermusiken . . .”

• Kammermusik No. 1, Op. 24, No. 1, for chamber orchestra (1921) (approx. 15’)
• Kleine Kammermusik, Op. 24, No. 2, for wind quintet (1922) (approx. 14-15’)
• Kammermusik No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 36, No. 1 (1924) (approx. 19-21’)
• Kammermusik No. 3 for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 36, No. 2 (1925) (approx. 16-18’)
• Kammermusik No. 4 for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 36, No. 3 (1925) (approx. 20-21’)
• Kammermusik No. 5 for Viola and Orchestra, Op. 36, No. 4 (1927) (approx. 19’)
• Kammermusik No. 6 for Viola d'Amore and Orchestra, Op. 46, No. 1 (1927) (approx. 16-18’)
• Kammermusik No. 7 for Organ and Orchestra, Op. 46, No. 2 (1927) (approx. 17-18’)

An essential virtue in our rapidly changing world is the capacity to adapt. An essential predicate to that is an awareness of changing realities, and a worldview that recognizes life as a dynamic and unfolding process. Illustrating this is a project of electronic and other music from Australia, called “Anthology of Australian Music on Disc”, now out of print. The following works are drawn from that collection.

• Larry Sitsky, Sharagan: Fantasia No. 5 (1984) (approx. 15’)
• Ross Edwards, Reflections (1985) (approx. 10’)

Other works by composers from the Australian series, and albums of their music, include:

• Sitsky, Piano Sonata No. 1, “Retirer d’en bas de l’eau” (2009) (approx. 25’)
• Sitsky, Sonata for solo flute No. 1 (1959) (approx. 15’)
• Sitsky, Sonata for solo flute No. 2, “Fourteen Days of Barto Thödol” (approx. 19’)
• Sitsky, Sonata for solo flute No. 5, “The Pied Piper” (2019) (approx. 12’)
• Sitsky, String Quartet (1969) (approx. 34’)
• Sitsky, Concerto for Violin, Orchestra and Female Voices, “Mysterium Cosmographicum” (1971) (approx. 36’)
• Donald Hollier, Variations on a Theme of Larry Sitsky (1970) (approx. 17’)
• Hollier, Sonatina No. 2 for piano (approx. 17’)
• Richard Meale, Cantilena Pacifica (approx. 8’) and Clouds Now and Then (1969) (approx. 8’)
• Carl Vine, Piano Concerto No. 1 (1997) (approx. 23’)
• Vincent Plush, Pacifico (1986) (approx. 25’)
• Warren Burt, “Harmonic Color Fields” album (2004) (68’)
• Burt, “The Animation of Lists And The Archytan Transpositions” (2006) (129’)
• Burt, “Music for Tuning Forks” album (1987) (65’)
• Ernie Althoff, Sun Music (approx. 22’)
• Tristram Cary, Trios album (2014) (approx. 24’); here is a link to Cary’s playlists
• Ross Edwards, “The Heart of the Night” on shakuhachi () (approx. 33’)
• Ross Edwards, Marimba Dances (1982) (approx. 10-13’)
• Gerard Brophy, “Forbidden Colours” album (2009) (64’)
• Brophy, Sheer Nylon Dances for violin, cello and “fetished” (prepared) piano (2000) (approx. 16’)

William Alwyn’s five symphonies and his Sinfonietta for Strings evoke life in the turbulent twentieth century:

•   Symphony No. 1 (1949) (approx. 41’)
•   Symphony No. 2 (1953) (approx. 31-32’)
•   Symphony No. 3 (1956) (approx. 33-35’)
•   Symphony No. 4 (1959) (approx. 39’)
•   Symphony No. 5, “Hydriotaphia” (1973) (approx. 15-16’)
•   Sinfonietta for Strings (1970) (approx. 25’)

Other works from Western classicism:

•   Leonard Bernstein, Candide (1956) (approx. 145-147’), expressing Voltaire’s point that ours is not necessarily the best of all possible worlds. Performances are conducted by Mauceri and Bernstein.
•   Henry Kimball Hadley, Symphony No. 4 in D minor, "North, East, South, West", Op, 64 (1910) (approx. 38’): in this work of musical realism, the four movements represent four locations.
•   Mieczysław Weinberg, String Quartet No. 8, Op. 66 (1959) (approx. 15-17’): “The suggestive musical program is reinforced by Weinberg's own remarks: 'Many of my works are related to the theme of war. This, alas, was not my own choice. It was dictated by my fate, by the tragic fate of my relatives. I regard it as my moral duty to write about the war, about the horrors that befell mankind in our country.'”
•   Mieczysław Weinberg, Trumpet Concerto in B-flat Major, Op. 94 (1967) (approx. 22-24’): amid characteristic Russian anxiety, the trumpet sounds a warning. In a similar vein, from a French composer, is André Jolivet, Concertino for Trumpet, Piano and Strings (1948) (approx. 9-10’).
•   Mieczyslaw Weinberg, Symphony No. 7, Op. 81 (1964) (approx. 30-31’): “The symphony is in five overwhelmingly slow movements (Adagio sostenuto, Allegro- Adagio sostenuto, Andante, Adagio sostenuto, Allegro-Adagio sostenuto). The treatment of the forces is unusual. The long final movement is at odds in many ways with the preceding ones. Though the harpsichord returns (it is absent from third and fourth movements), its expression is curiously and deliberately unexpressive, and the final two movements tend to have a fragmentary, somewhat uncertain and frequently dissonant character, while the first three are more lyrical.” “. . . there’s a darkness at the heart of the score. The symphony starts out serenely. As it develops though, the dissonances become more prominent, ratcheting up the tension.”
•   William Bolcom, Frescoes for two pianos, harmonium and harpsichord (1971) (approx. 28-30’): I. War in Heaven; II. The Caves of Orcus.
•   Mark Hagerty, “The Realm of Possibility” (2006) (approx. 60’): “The work’s emotional narrative exteriorizes an autobiographically authentic psychological history that, though sometimes refracted through scientific metaphor, ultimately roams a varied inner human terrain to intersect with natural processes and phenomena remote and beyond.”
•   Jordan Dykstra, “Orbits” (2017) (approx. 15’)
•   Eduardas Balsys, Dramatic Frescoes (1965) (approx. 28’) portrays “the conflicts at play” during the Soviet-era cold war.
•   William Schuman, Night Journey (1947) (approx. 21’): this Martha Graham ballet (approx. 29’) takes place at the moment of the character Jocasta’s death (in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex). Per the original program notes, “takes place in the instant when Jocasta learns that she has mated with Oedipus, her own son, and has borne him children.”
•   Gity Razaz, The Strange Highway, for cello octet (2011) (approx. 10’): “I was moved by the subtle but potent sense of desolation and vulnerability expressed through the poem’s powerful imagery. My attempt in writing the piece was to capture and recreate these emotions through rhythmic and violent opening and closing sections that engulf a lyrical, emotionally and dramatically charged middle section that uses dense, contrapuntal melodies and rich harmonies.”

Albums:

•   U2, “The Joshua Tree” (1987) (50’) “is an album about the myth of America and how that clouds the failure of its systems or the darkness that lies beneath it.”
•   Theo Hill, “Reality Check” (2020) (55’)
•   Michael Formanek & Elusion Quartet, “Time Like This” (2018) (59’): “In his classy and technically sophisticated Elusion Quartet, Formanek has made emotional immediacy a priority, without blunting his signature cutting-edge.”
•   Bria Skonberg, “Nothing Never Happens” (2019) (41’) “takes us through the dark night of her heart and the national soul . . .”
•   Harris Eisenstadt, “Recent Developments” (2017) (41’): “While Eisenstadt lists his inspirations as including Jane Jacob's seminal book The Death And Life Of Great American Cities, The Sopranos TV series, and Moroccan Berber rugs, he claims no programmatic intent.”
•   Katy Guillen & The Girls, “Heavy Days” (2016) (42’): “. . . the trio works out themes of loss, loneliness, love gone wrong, or love that can’t bear the load of the enduring push and pull of a relationship.”
•   Nitin Sawhney, “Dystopian Dream” (2015) (55’) “grapples with themes of loss, isolation, surrender, and continuity.”
•   Johnny Gandelsman, “This Is America: An Anthology 2020-2021” (2022) (236’): “Working with funding from 20 arts organizations in 11 states and Washington, D.C., he commissioned 22 new works for solo violin, asking living American composers to write musical reflections of the times we are living through.”
•   Aja Monet, “when the poems do what they do” (2023) (83’) takes “us through storm-battered homes and jump rope competitions as she explores Black joy and the blight of capitalism.”
•   Chaz Knapp, Cy Werner & Chaz Prymek, “Microfolk” (2023) (99’): “Old-time banjo flail and dobro slide, gathered alfresco amid the wilderness of Arkansas and Missouri, are lent a sepia-edged tone by atrophying tape loops working in simpatico communiqué with musty field recordings of rain showers and chirping cicadas.”

Music: songs and other short pieces

• Paul Simon, “Silent Eyes” (lyrics)
• John Lennon, "Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)" (lyrics)

Visual Arts

• Max Ernst, The Equivocal Woman (1923) (Is she aware?)

Film and Stage

• Born on the Fourth of July, about a gung-ho patriot who learns to question his assumptions
• Solaris, a film that questions what is real: our perceptions or something more objective
• The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, a satire on traditionalism
• A Foreign Affair